Saturday, July 20, 2013

Today when issues are discussed and reasons dug out from the forgotten pages of history which is replete with sad experiences and traumas of the women and therefore solutions worked upon i think some things will remain unresolved forever. The best example can be this penchant for the color of the skin which looks white and fair.
Stupidity arises when we are forced upon to change ourselves in a way defying our basic constitutions over which we have no control.
i turned to check what was the latest by friends and family on FB and what do i see...
Looking and reading too good to be true. This appealing with it's rich purple fruit a promotion ad about Acai Berry. There are various ads bordering the edges but what piqued my anxiety/curiosity was that it was on top of the page and that it was liked by a school friend. A friend who is successful in her career and is wow wowed on Facebook but is vehemently criticized in reality outside the FB for becoming hopelessly out of shape . Words and explanations about its miracle on Aishwarya Rai, Lara Dutt...post pregnancy all i read diligently after i had clicked to the hyperlinked area see more.

The first words that silently escaped into the universe like an invisible prayer was, Thank Heavens a couple at least happened...who are not promoting this or anything which even remotely borders to weight reduction.
Two is no number in the teeming millions but thank God they are there now and if i could i would plant with delight the thank you hugs and kisses on the two...Vidya Balan and although had to go with weight reduction but nevertheless not anorexic but full enough to be a typical Indian beauty, Sonakshi Sinha.

Now i don't know how they have reacted to all when they were addressed to as fat but if i start penning down right from the time i can remember of all associated with the same of mine i think my blog would start looking like a novel. A novel very few would even care to glance and maybe i'd have to pay to get it published because i'm not as prolific and as assertive on issues as a novelist should be.

But thanks to the way the beauty of the Indian female body is projected across through these two beautiful women i feel free of the remorse as to why i have a low BMI. More from that feeling that made me pity my healthy self all my life. i had accepted the premise sadly no matter how rebellious towards it i was.
Illogical/irrational though it may sound that unwittingly people are cruel to those who are healthy. For i have been a victim of prejudices right from the day when i was an infant to being a small kid and my elder brother had nicknamed me MOTAKS ( Mota in Hindi meaning fat).

Free also of the pain from a knee injury that saw me almost bedridden for about a month and a half. Can't express enough the exasperation of being a temporary paraplegic with THE husband and THE irritable in his temperament most of the times octogenarian Dad breathing down my neck 24/7 with all the do's and don'ts. As if being imprisoned in a restricted area is not enough, as if the pain and discomfort in doing simple things is not enough. No no! i don't decry their care and concern rather for a healthy all her life who craved attention and pampering this could have been it. Alas!

A lesson learnt though while i was recuperating. Healthy all their life are still treated with the same prejudices accident or no accident. Taken for granted most of the time to take care of all and sundry like a female wrestler. Here too the culprit could be the healthy glow that never abandoned the face no matter how stressed/ tired/ in pain she was.
Or perhaps you are at a disadvantage when your threshold for enduring pain and staying put is slightly higher than the rest in your family.
And you are not yelling your pain out and bearing it with much stoicism.
Even when you've had a complex flap tear in the Posterior Horn of The Meniscus and you are experiencing excruciating pain in the affected area and your entire leg feels out of control.

There has to be some emaciated generally look to present a ' Poor You' else when Forever Healthy do get sick or have an accident a lot many accusations are hurled upon along with endless unwarranted advises.
None! mind you! none would be willing to take some responsibility in running the house like it should be when the female wrestler has had an accident. Instead-
All that will rain incessantly is accusations of how callous you could be, followed by assumed from Heaven knows where reasons of why or how the injury happened to be, falsified analysis, endless discussions about your body type... . Uff! it's so unbearable but you are made to undergo all that because you are not thin.
Yes also finally painful limping from one doctor to the other till the renowned specialist reiterates that surgery is the only way.

You might feel like shrieking out in rebellion when a lie is propagated on your behalf. That you fell off from a stool. When the fact of the matter was that you tried getting on a stool without support and you heard something snapping followed by intense pain.
You will get sick and tired of hearing, " Reduce your weight" and " Physiotherapy exercises at least for 30 minutes four times a day." This when the person on whom these are dropped like missiles can't even move her snapped something- inside- the- knee leg.
One is then grateful to the various hospitals that Motaks was going to for they seemed so much kinder to her than her own folks who took her there. For at once a kind paramedic would be ready to wheel her around the moment he/she saw the poor healthy lady struggling with her limp and in intense pain.

What perhaps could make your loved one so cruel is something that could be attributed to you beingoverweight according to the standards set by the slim and thin is perfect body world. But this beating round the bush when a simple decision could have relieved you from pain and discomfort is UNFORGIVING. Specially from those from whom you need some understanding/ sympathy for your pain and discomfort. These your own who won't know the difference or rather will not want to know the difference between a sprain and tear, between ligament and muscles what to talk of between ligament and meniscus. All they ever know to be serious is a fracture and fracture is something that bones have and that is not only painful but apparent and requires proper treatment and care.
No amount of showing them the light can or will work because neither will have the concern nor the patience for the ' Indulgent... Sloppy...' you to understand the anatomy and reason well enough that the doctor is not asking for surgery unnecessarily.

Rather sometimes you will get to hear comments like this, " The doctors are asking for surgery because they make more money out of it...these days it's the general procedure..." or
You might be yelling in pain when you have to turn over and instead you will be advised, " Why don't you try to do some simple exercise like this...physiotherapy is the only way..."
This and many other on similar lines hurt and the pain is worse than that you would be having on your knee.

Secretly then you start wishing that instead of the meniscus tearing why didn't the femur or the tibia break into two pieces instead to give you an elephant's leg. It would be very evident as your pain then can be seen/felt by one and all . Why did the snapping happen to be an invisible one, one that isn't evident to the naked eye. Although sometimes in your anger and seething from within with all that hurt happening in your healthy soul you might also wish something like this, " Wait till something snaps somewhere in you too...and then when you are in pain i shall happily give it all back to you..."

Other times there will be comments from quarters quite elderly and you least expect that from the one you trusted would have more empathy/sympathy and respect for you. Comments so embarrassing and you feel like limppearing (limp and disappear) into the closet. Embarrassing you to kill yourself words like this, " You ought to have been more careful...your girth is wide...aren't you aware that your lower half is quite heavy..."

i've heard this phrase Fat-Phobic World but what beats me is why or how people start being contemptuous of their own race. i wonder if this is the case in Japan, China and elsewhere in the world were all bodies are different and definitely not Anglo-Saxon.
There is a recent craze that has gripped most of the young ladies in our country where they all want to look like the bulimic, anorexic models that walk the ramp in Paris. The recent fad being to have thighs with gap. Which actually means having legs that look uniform all over.

My own pictures from halcyon days to now tell me that i have the typical Indian Woman body. But it's taken two beautiful and successful ladies in modern times to convince me how beautiful, elegant, graceful that is.
i hope this prejudice, criticism, contempt for the Indian figure stops once for all and that we start respecting our own form. The so called perfected bodies that look painfully thin rather than it looking healthy has more to it than meets the eye. Some like Anushka Sharma and blessings to her goodness when in one of her interviews she honestly says that although she works out regularly to keep her stamina up she has a naturally high BMI there are others who become leaders in dismissing/ disregarding the Indian body and for reasons that may be important to them opt for what is known as Size Zero. Never knew that zero had so much value standing on its own.
Are they least bit aware of what they are encouraging. That they are in a way responsible for perpetuating the stupidity and the already existing cruelty. More on to the minds and psyche of the young generations who perhaps will soon dismiss and disregard the most original and pure aspect in a woman's life called Motherhood.

Healthy Forever like us are falsely accused of indulgence, disease, depressed, disregard for personal dignity...and demonised for our size and sometimes even insulted and often discriminated upon.

i still feel like crying when i picture this from childhood, " No! No! don't give her ghee ( clarified butter) in herrice...or how i was handed out plain toasts instead of a buttered one or 4-5 cashews while my brother/sister got a bowl full just because i was not thin like them.
BTW my younger sister and my brother who can gorge endlessly on cheese, butter and ghee sport a Anushka Sharma body, still. And denied myself of all the good things all my life i am still the one whom the healthy-phobic world calls FAT.
i might be having my first meal of the day and someone sitting on the table will promptly offer illogical/ stupid advise. Like this one from my sickly thin cousin, " Munni tumko rice nahin khana chahiyae!'' ( Munni you should not be eating rice)
i feel like hurling his own plate so overflowing with everything at his face. Then curse my own body before i eat but stick to eating rice instead of substituting it with chapatis more with vengeance at what i was forbidden to eat even though the joy of having a family meal together had flown out of the window of the dining room for me.

i had hastily scribbled this in my diary one day. Some statistic to slap on the face of those who mocked me. One of the e-paper version of The Guardian of a study led by senior scientist Katherine Flegal of the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention in the US. That people in the overweight category of 25-30 BMI demonstrate alower death rate thantheir peers who are of normal weight. i presume by normal to be thin or what they call slim nowadays.
So i am telling myself and the rest who might be facing the same predicament as me to dispel all doubts and to finally forge a truce with themselves.

Also this could be relevant for Sonakshi Sinha and all the rest like me who are forced/ tempted by Acai Berry and all the rest including the various trips to body sculpting saloons to think twice before taking simple or drastic steps to change what you are blessed with. The same study also demonstrated that stable weight causes far less stress to the heart than going up and down the scales in weight.
So lets feel happy with what we are. It's not whether you want to live long or die young. But try and respect yourself by maintaining a healthy glow rather than getting a figure that looks thin but all charm gone out like a sucked out of it's juices Chus lee a term coined rhyming with Bruce lee meaning looking like a fruit skin devoid of it's juices and rich pulp. Something like how Sri Devi's face looks in the movie English Vinglish. Trust me on this compare her baby doll full look with her worked out to thin body and you will know what i mean.

To all those who keep prodding you to eat this and do that feel confident and free to dismiss them like a fly that buzzed by.
And if perchance you get this notion of being a blot on the landscape of sleek and slim open the computer and type Images Vidya Balan in Cannes on the Google search box or else
Simply say this to yourself- Curve is interesting and Flat oh! so boring...shrug your shoulders and just move on. Move on with pride and confidence saying to yourself, " Hey i'm curvaceous, interesting and oh! so voluptuous!"
Who knows this could be the prayer thrown to the universe and having something like size zero body might become history too...

25 comments:

very well written, for a girl, i dont know weight is a major concern and these days, weight is a concern for all.But harming your body to look slim is not advisable. In your write up, most of the things, I would not understand, coz I a guy. It is completely a girl thing!!!! But I can understand the feeling behind it. I liked it, coz you spoke your mind.

@ Niranjan...thank u for going through with all even when u couldn't relate. I appreciate it very much.Yes and I did speak my mind out on something that saddened me. Thank u once again for being patient on that. :)

I read this with mixed feelings, Shivani. You see, the elders in the family worry because they know (often through experience) the problems that weight - due to lack of regular and sensible exercise - causes to health. The quality of life goes down considerably. At the same time a broken bone needs weight off it so that it can heal and the last thing a person in pain needs is a lecture on weight. That is downright crass and insensitive. Do get that knee mended soon.

@KayEm thank u for giving me time and patience and also for offering me perspective.Knee looks healed apparently after surgery and really appreciate the concern.i am aware that weight is a major issue with problems relating to bone or spine.i am only complaining about the pressures that one goes through right from childhood if she/ he is not thin. The size depends a lot on genetics and environment. i suppose having suffered all my life this was the best i could do...lash out.Hope u don't get put off by this. Pls do drop in sometime. Your comments are most welcome and very much needed. :)

Very good message Shivani. We need to embrace our bodies. I really envy people who eat everything and anything and still stay slim.But, I think food is not the only reason for overweight. It depends on various other factors too as you said! I can relate to your feelings!

It is so distressing.I can imagine your frustration. This society of ours is sick and cruel. And what can one say, even those who are supposed to accept us without reservations can sometimes be such morons. Hugs girl! Sometimes one has to shut them all off and stand up for one's own self.

@ Rachna glad that u could feel my frustration. Yeah reconciliation has happened but after a really long time. After dieting this way and exercising that way...Uff! baap re baap ! Like they say in my own mother tongue.Hugs and lots of love that u took it up too...to speak of that which never cross the minds of parents even what to talk of others.Hope to see more of u on my posts. Not all will have so many words I can vouch for that.:)))

@ Saru Singhal thanks for ur valuable comments and for that time and patience. The sad thing is that the craze for thin had actually felt as discrimination even when I was a child. Like I said. However its only now that it's so blatant...everyone seems to vote for thin...Look around and see...slim fit clothes everywhere which perhaps may be comfortable for thin people but definitely not for people like us who have fuller bodies.

Very well written. I was always on the chubby side but I never felt sad or embarrassed coz of that. Yea felt sad when I couldn't fit into something which caught my eyes. What we are lies in our attitude and our outlook towards life. But definitely having a healthy body is also important.

motak .. hehehe.. this is a word we commonly use .. in UP to represent the chubby :D and chus lee is world popular hahahhaha.. I think ..a little chubby is any day better than the chus lee body.... I may not be in any good position to defend fats .. being a gym o holic , though

Yes advises and special advises when you don't need them is so irritating. And the person feels offended when you follow their advice. As for that fair skin fetish, I think MJ was a classical example for it. I liked Jackson when he was his original self.Well written :-)

Reading through the entire post, I could see your different emotional phases. I was never at peace with my body and most of my earlier years were spent in trying something or the other to become slim. It is only now that I have managed to accept my self and ME for what I am. The negative body image was further fueled by my boyfriends during those times who always wanted me to reduce my weight. I was always struggling with my image of myself. Only after 27, I gained the self-esteem to be me as I was. So, I can completely relate with what you are saying. Big hugs Shivani.

Nicely portrayed Shivani. I sometimes feel like it is a marketing ruse by companies about fairness, being in a defined shape to ensure that most people fall trap to it. Somehow in the whole process, people are losing something very important in life - their own nature of self appreciation and the need to be acknowledged by someone else, may it be FB or TV or what not.. Somehow that internal connect seems amiss!

Dear Vinay thank you so much not only for stopping by but also for ur valuable words. Those which convey a lot of good message. Grateful indeed.Also feel like copy pasting ur words on ur own comment box as a reply to mine here...regarding the same. Words have power and maybe bringing it here will make my post even more forceful. :)